Confess your love as well as your folly
by Starlight77
Summary: Post-"Marionette."  He lives in purgatory, with Heaven just out of reach.


**Spoilers:** Through "Concentrate and Ask Again."  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-"Marionette." He lives in purgatory, with Heaven just out of reach.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I don't own the fabulous show that is _Fringe_ or the beautiful song that is "White Blank Page."  
><strong>AN:** Written for the 2011 op_ficathon on LJ for lule_bell. She requested a fic taking place between "Marionette" and "6B" set to the Mumford & Sons' song "White Blank Page." I hope you enjoy!

And, to anyone reading, make sure to listen to the whole song (preferably after reading this fic) because it's lovely.

Also, a huge thank you to holycitygirl who only ever betas because I ask.

* * *

><p><em>Can you lie next to her and give her your heart, as well as your body<em>

_And can you lie next to her and confess your love, as well as your folly_

* * *

><p>It ends like this:<p>

A man confesses his sin. He is not the first man to be seduced by a woman nor will he be the last.

It ends like this:

Confession leads to condemnation and the man is cast out from Paradise. Contrition lingers in the garden long after his exile.

It ends like this.

Except it doesn't end, and Peter Bishop lives in a constant state of purgatory.

* * *

><p>Temptation comes, as it often does, in the form of red.<p>

But he has always preferred blondes, and blonde he gets.

It's a heady thing, finally getting what you've imagined for so long. He finds himself over at her place all the time, serving her breakfast in bed and curling up against her at night as they watch old romantic movies. If she were any other woman, he would have proceeded with caution - no need to get involved too deep and too fast. But the time for that is long past, probably around the moment he saw her risk her life on the word of a madman to save the man she loved.

There's only one other time he's seen her go to greater lengths than that and it involved him, a Doomsday Device, and interdimensional travel. It's humbling being the one on the receiving end of Olivia Dunham's devotion, and he's never believed in luck but he does consider himself a fortunate man.

Of course, loving Olivia is something he's used to; it's being in love with her that's different.

It's…easier than he thought it'd be. It all falls into place too naturally, too smoothly. He expected more resistance, even after her confession - even after Over There.

But she sees things differently now, she tells him. A little shift in perspective.

An even bigger shift in their relationship. He understands, so he adjusts.

If he makes more adjustments than he thought he would have to, he finds ways to explain it. If she is lighter, if she is less burdened, it's because she's seen what her life could be like and wants such happiness for herself. If her smile comes quicker than it used to, it's because their relationship is new and exciting and his smiles come a lot quicker too. If she is more patient with Walter, it's because she's content (or at least as content as one can be when faced with a war between universes) and a lot less tense.

Their relationship is different so she is different.

Furthermore, he has nothing by which to compare. Ever since he'd known her, she'd been mourning: John Scott, Charlie Francis, the life of every innocent person she'd failed to save on the job, but most of all a life taken from her at childhood by the insertion of a drug into her veins at the age of three and the cold press of a gun against her palm by nine.

She does not let people in, but Peter is anything if not patient (Walter's outbursts have trained him well). He has been a constant presence at her side, following her lead and reading her unspoken cues the way he always does in the field.

And so if there are changes, small changes, well…this is the closest he's ever seen her to happy so the change is good.

This is what he tells himself. This is what he tells her. Good, just different.

And none of these differences are inconsistent with this simple hypothesis: Their relationship is different so she is different.

(Of course there _is _another hypothesis, just as simple. But it's one that his heart refuses to accept - and so his mind never gets to).

* * *

><p>There are only two women in his life who've ever successfully bluffed him.<p>

They share the same name, same job, same face.

The first time ends with an ego bruising. The second with a loaded gun.

* * *

><p><em>But tell me now where was my fault, in loving you with my whole heart<em>

_But tell me now where was my fault, in loving you with my whole heart_

* * *

><p>There's another shift. Back into the zone of professionalism, or at least the attempt is made to get back there.<p>

Of course, that's impossible when every look she gives him is fraught with pain. It makes him almost want to say "I'm sorry" again, but he knows there are no words to fix this. Or to take back what he's done. He does not believe in regret, finds it pointless to contemplate what he could have done to uncover the deception sooner.

He is much more interested in the facts. Namely, that Olivia has no desire at present to be with him and might never have such a desire again. However, since their lives are inseparably intertwined, there is nothing more he can do than respect her wishes and be her partner. Maybe work back one day - and he can't even begin to think of when that day would be - to being her friend.

It's a cruel sort of punishment, for a man to live with what he can no longer have right in front of him. It's even crueler when he considers that he did have it but it was all a lie, a cleverly wrought illusion. He may not have regrets, but he sure does have memories.

The memories are the most painful, because even with the fraud exposed, he can't help but remember the beauty of what he'd felt when he thought he was with her.

It's the beauty that stays with him, because it's an echo of what should have been theirs.

Rationally, he knows they are the same: same genetics, same mannerisms, same efficiency in getting the same job done. If he counted, he is sure the similarities would outweigh the differences. But it's the differences themselves that outweigh any number of similarities.

In the end, it's the simplest difference of all: she wasn't _his _Olivia.

He'd been attracted to _her_, sure, when he'd first met her Over There. But it was in the same way that he'd been attracted to his Olivia the first time he met her almost three years ago now in a hotel in Baghdad.

Attraction is fleeting. It'd been that haunted look in her eyes, as she begged him from one human being to another to help save a dying man, and that same haunted look every time since, that made him fall in love with her.

"You belong with me," she'd said and he'd taken it for what it was: the truth.

He doesn't believe in destiny; you live with the choices you make. And when he had come back from the Other Side, he had made his.

_Einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera toy. _Keep your people close. Take care of the people you care about.

So he lives in purgatory, with Heaven just out of reach.

* * *

><p>There are moments he does not remember:<p>

A lost little boy takes a pen to a white blank page, and scrawls the only explanation needed: _I am going home._

But he cannot return and there is another woman who feels real, a woman who looks and acts so much like the mother he remembers, and he makes himself forget.

(Years later he cannot return and there will be another woman who feels real, a woman who looks and acts so much like the one he loves, and this other will make him forget.)

* * *

><p><em>Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life<em>

_Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life_

* * *

><p>He's read her report: confinement in a white, padded cell on Liberty Island, a combination of drugs and therapy to ensure successful transference of her alternate's memories, lines drawn on her body to indicate organs deemed important for further research on Cortexiphan.<p>

But these are the bare facts, and behind the clinical account he can read every excruciating detail of her loneliness, terror, and desperation. He lets these emotions sink into his skin, until they overwhelm every instance of happiness, desire, and affection that he felt with _her_ while his Olivia was fighting for her life - fighting to get back to him.

He had been the only thing to get her through, just a figment of her imagination that she had held onto amidst all the madness and confusion.

In return, he had held another woman in his arms: _You feel real_, he'd told her.

But real is just a matter of perception. He perceives the torment of darkened isolation, the distress at seeing a resurrected mother, and the emptiness borne of lost hope.

_This is real_, he tells himself, as guilt rises up to shatter the illusion.

* * *

><p>Forgiveness, or something close to it, washes over him like the promise of sunrise.<p>

Love certainly does, as she mouths the words: _We can get past it_.

It's in that moment - barely able to speak - that he realizes how much he missed _her_, this Olivia who is always trying to make up for something, always trying to right some imaginary wrong.

There is so much he wants to express, so much he wishes he could tell her, but he knows to settle on gratitude.

As he turns away from her, the rational side of him reminds him not to hope too much.

* * *

><p>For all his stupidity, Peter Bishop is not the type of man who makes the same mistake twice.<p>

The next time he loses her - if there must be a next time - he will not fail to recognize her or bring her back himself.

Olivia's eyes are darker, she likes her coffee black with one sugar, but he forces himself to see past the surface differences to find that lost little girl alone and terrified in that dark cell.

This time, he holds on.


End file.
